


Something Rotten

by sailias



Category: Bron | Broen | The Bridge, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sherlock season 3 compatible, The Bridge season 2 compatible
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:45:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9288962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailias/pseuds/sailias
Summary: Thanks ever so much to Birth of the Phoenix for your wonderful beta reading!New note: I rewrote a small part at the end for long term plot purposes.





	1. Prologue

LATE MARCH, 2013

Sherlock wiped the fogged-over car window with the side of his hand and squinted in his binoculars. The white sedan was still parked in the cone of natrium-yellow streetlight outside the warehouse. No one had come or gone since he got here.

A cold, wet wind from the Kattegat Sea brought a near-icy drizzle, making visual surveillance difficult. It was time to take a closer look, anyway. He made his way on foot the last few hundred meters, crossing the open loading area in front of the warehouse. It was the middle of the night, and the run-down industrial area in the harbour of Helsingør was deserted.

Last afternoon and evening had been spent on the road, in a tedious and eventually fruitless pursuit of the man Sherlock had come to call the Handler. So far, this man was the most promising link to the higher levels of the Danish-based terrorist organization Sherlock had been working his way closer to for the last few months.

The news had been full of the spectacular terrorist attacks in the region, and while the Danish and Swedish authorities had reacted to the crimes already committed, Sherlock had approached things from a rather different angle. He’d started looking at unassuming people in key positions in the press, in security firms and in the organizer staff of the upcoming EU summit, and studied their data traffic and travel patterns. He’d found a connection between the EU summit organizer’s PA and the Handler, interacting in all-too-easily deciphered code on various web forums. It was clear that the summit was the scene of the culmination of the last weeks of attacks, and that the Handler was a step or two further up the terror organization food chain than any of the other people that Sherlock was watching.

As per their agreement to alert Mycroft whenever he came across plots that were directly harmful to British interests, Sherlock had suggested that it might be better if British politicians stayed away from Copenhagen. His brother, however, had maintained that he trusted the local authorities to keep things under control. That didn't seem very likely to Sherlock, as his brief run-ins with Danish police had proved them to be as incompetent as any police force he’d ever encountered, but he’d done his part and delivered the warning. It would be on Mycroft if he didn't heed it.

Some time ago, when he first identified the man, Sherlock had placed a tracker in the Handler’s car, and yesterday afternoon, after the revealed terror threat to the summit meeting centre and subsequent shutdown of the same, it had seemed like his ill suffered patience would finally pay off.

The Handler had suddenly driven south. Monitoring the tracker’s movements on the screen of his mobile phone, Sherlock had followed it down nearly the entire length of Denmark, staying about fifteen minutes behind. Finally the Handler had stopped in the middle of the countryside, near the German border.

When he’d arrived, the car stood abandoned in a field. It had been quickly but thoroughly cleaned and had been annoyingly devoid of anything that could lead Sherlock closer to the terrorist group. At least the Handler was still unaware he’d been followed, the tiny tracker had still been in place under the hood of the car. He’d sent Mycroft a quick text.

_Handler crossed border_  
_on foot, southbound route._  
_All yours now. SH._

_Why not pursue yourself?_

_Dull. SH._

Checking the log of the tracking device, Sherlock had noted an odd fifteen minute stop just prior to the southbound drive. The Handler usually stayed in or around Copenhagen, where his main function was to act as a buffering layer between the lower levels of the organization's hierarchy and those higher up, relaying information and performing clean-up tasks. What business had brought him to Helsingør?

Approaching the warehouse, Sherlock slowed down to give the white car a quick look-over; it was clean, non-descript, impersonal, clearly a rental. A search of the car registry would give nothing away; just like the Handler’s car it would officially lack even the tiniest connection to any criminal activity whatsoever. He scanned the ground for signs of the Handler’s car. The rain had already washed away most of the traces on the asphalt; all that remained was a tiny, oily pool. He bent down and dipped his finger in the oil, sniffed it. It confirmed what he already knew, the Handler’s car had stood here. Whoever had been in the white car might still be in the warehouse.

Circling the large building he found that the door by the car was the only unlocked entrance, and after listening for signs of people and hearing none, he swung the large steel door open.

In the middle of the vast empty interior of the warehouse was a dead woman. She was shot, obviously, sitting slumped sideways in a chair, sharply illuminated by professional lighting mounted on tripod stands. A video camera was put in position for recording, aimed at the woman in the chair.

Careful to move sideways, keeping close to the wall the first few steps as to avoid smudging any evidence, Sherlock entered the room. Perhaps this was a message, a filmed execution? The sub-cells of this organisation had posted video clips of threats and demands online before, but never anything as brutal as this. It didn’t fit.

Studying the corpse, Sherlock repressed a shudder of annoyance. It was all so easy, no mystery or challenge in this murder.

“Pretty straightforward one, isn’t it?” John commented, from the corner of Sherlock’s vision.

“They all are,” Sherlock agreed bitterly. Like so many of the other missions. Just tedious, _tedious_ work, inching his way closer to his goal. To make it all bearable he’d sometimes imagine that John was with him, much the way he used to do back in the flat when John was off courting one of his many girlfriends. John would stay nearby, in the background or just out of sight, a steady, quiet presence that brought Sherlock comfort. The self delusion was at it’s most effective when he was on a crime scene making deductions. John in his mind would comment once or twice on the scene and, of course, express delight at Sherlock’s brilliance.

Once in awhile, though, John in his mind wasn’t delighted. It was taking too long, he’d say. If Sherlock was so smart, why wasn’t he finished by now? John would urge him to hurry up, to solve it! So Sherlock focused on the task at hand, before John got impatient.

The woman had been shot three times to the chest. Blood had dripped on the concrete floor, congealing and darkening underneath the chair. Rigor mortis was almost fully developed, consistent with the time frame of the Handler being here last afternoon. There were no flies, there wouldn’t be; it was to early Scandinavian spring for insects. Three shell casings from a semiautomatic handgun were scattered on the floor between the camera and the body.

She was white, in her mid forties and, judging by her tastefully understated designer clothing, the high-end wristwatch and the heavy silver links around her neck, wealthy. The jewellery was all her own taste, however. Not gifts, not heirlooms. She made her own money, and lots of it.

She wore little makeup, and what she wore was neutral, meant to be invisible. Her nails were trimmed short, and the skin of her hand was soft and smelled of shea butter, but near the wrist there was a faint trace of hand disinfectant. There was a slight flattened callus on the pad of her right thumb, indicating frequent use of medical syringes and pipettes. More calloused skin in the creases where her ears met her head, little grooves from mask straps and earpieces of protective glasses, worn into the skin by frequent and prolonged use.

So, well educated, skilled and successful in her highly-paid, specialized lab work, which required frequent disinfection of her hands, and use of syringes and protective gear… Ah! Of course. Researcher at a leading bio-chemical or pharmaceutical company.

The Danish terror organization was known for their strong pro-environmental stance. Perhaps this was a message? Kidnap a top researcher from one of their blacklisted companies, film her and demand some environmental change or other in exchange for her freedom? Then it backfired, and the hostage ended up killed? Or perhaps they had escalated to filmed executions?

Her hairstyle, though... It didn't quite fit the picture of a woman working in the cut-throat bio-chem industry. Her shiny black hair was gathered in a thick bohemian side-braid, more suited to some earthy, eco-friendly neo-hippie. He checked the label of her fine knit beige jumper - yes, sustainable fabric. So was the elegant winter coat laying in a neat bundle by the camera stand.

She had no injuries other than the gunshot wounds, no abrasions on her wrists or by her ankles. The back of her head was smooth, without bumps or gun muzzle marks. She wasn't forced to sit there, she wasn't bound or otherwise incapacitated. The mucous membranes of her eyes and mouth showed no signs of drugging.

She had not been a hostage. She had been a member of the organization, and she had been recording herself as part of a mission. So what had gone wrong?

Sherlock moved over to the camera, examining it. The memory card was removed. He looked at the body again. The positions and angles of the gunshot wounds indicated she had been shot in her chair by a standing shooter, from very close range. He would have been just behind the camera when he shot her. She would have been sitting here in the bright light, and he would have been a silhouette in the shadows. There were no signs of escape or struggle. She’d known him, had expected him to come. Most likely, she was one of the eco terrorist foot-folk under the Handler’s supervision, he’d been her contact and support line to higher levels of the main group. She’d have no reason to see him as a threat.

Sherlock turned to look at the stretch of floor from the chair to the door. His own rain-wet footprints were glaringly obvious but when bohemian bio-chem woman and the Handler had come here the weather had been dry. Some of the few, faint traces of the woman’s sensible heels were overlapped by a larger set of shoes, here and there. She had come here before the Handler. His footprints were going in and then out of the warehouse again. Hers didn’t. The Handler had entered the warehouse, walked over to her, maybe even talked for a bit. Then he’d shot her without so much as a warning, turned around and left.

It was pretty much impossible to miss from such a short distance, but the way the wounds weren’t all spread out showed he wasn’t a complete rubbish shot.

“Three shots - a bit much, really,” John’s voice said. “One bullet would have gotten the job done.”

Oh. Sherlock looked at the scene in light of the Handler’s overuse of ammunition. He was either unsure of his skill with a gun (already established as unlikely), a hot-head with trouble holding his temper or acting out of desperation.

In all likelihood he had not been supposed to kill her, at least not like this. Everything here spoke of the Handler acting in haste, in anger, in desperation. He had done nothing to hide the crime, he hadn't even bothered to pick up the shell casings. Those wouldn’t give any leads either, however. The Handler would never have reached so far up the terror organization's hierarchy without some level of self-preservation; the gun would already have been dumped.

Leaving her here like this, though... it was too careless, as if he didn't care if he got caught by the police. No, he most certainly _didn’t_ care about the police. He was much more worried that his superiors would find him first, a scenario that was far more dangerous. The sudden drive to Germany had not been part of the plan. He made a mistake, and now he was on the run.

Too bad that Sherlock had lost him at the border. Now that his fellow terrorists were hunting him, the Handler was a very good possibility for gaining access to the organization's core. Well, he was long gone by now. Perhaps there were things still clues here that the Handler had overlooked in his haste.

Hoping there might be more clues in her car, he searched for car keys. He found them in her coat pocket, along with an envelope. In the envelope was a business card, and an old fashioned hotel room key with a small round golden tag. As Sherlock looked at the items the thrill of pursuit started strumming through his body. On the flip side of the key tag was a golden toad on a black background. The business card had the same toad design on one side, and on the other was a hotel name, _DE GOUDEN PAD_ , and an Amsterdam address. Next to the address was short handwritten message: _Tirsdag, 13:00_. That was in roughly 36 hours from now.

Pocketing the envelope and the car keys, Sherlock walked out of the warehouse and into the night.


	2. Chapter 1

MARCH,  2015

 

John was cold but happy, walking alongside Sherlock in the crisp London night after solving a case. It hadn’t been the most intricate case ever, but still nicely distracting, with at least one chase across the rooftops of London. It was the first real case they’d had together in over a month, what with the carryings-on involving Sherlock’s near-deportation and the Moriarty-scare, in which Sherlock had been brilliant even as he detoxed, John had gotten shot at yet again, and Mary rescued them all, and then gone to prison.

They had just finished giving their statements to Lestrade, and it was nearing half one in the morning. Because Sherlock had, of course, insisted on going to a specific kebab van -  ‘the best in London, I got their aunt acquitted once’ -  they were out by the Camden Locks. Sherlock had ordered for them both, and yeah, the kebab was delicious and John was hungry, hadn't eaten more than a few biscuits since breakfast actually, and now they were leisurely strolling along the all-but deserted street in the clear cold March night, giggling and and stuffing themselves with gloriously warm pita bread, lamb, tahini and sauerkraut.

Sherlock was post-case easygoing, his breath billowing out in clouds in the frigid air as he prattled on, “So you see, John, it is actually not all that uncommon for the victim to have done it, and the makers of Cluedo should revise their game…” Sherlock was captivating, his eyes alight with smugness and his face relaxed and with a little garlic sauce on his chin. It was so much like old times, John felt his chest constrict with something like hope. 

The moment was broken when a sleek black car pulled up to the kerb, the window rolled down just enough for Mycroft to flash them a quirked eyebrow. When Sherlock only responded by taking a big bite out of his pita, chewing demonstrably and emitting a great big sound of culinary enjoyment, John had to look away and stifle a giggle. Mycroft just regarded them blankly and told them to get in, in that subzero calm tone of voice he used when he was annoyed just passed his limit. John straightened his back; after the events of Christmas and January, John thought he knew Mycroft well enough to gauge his temperament somewhat. John got an inkling that Mycroft only got noticeably frustrated when he was scared, and that one of the few things that actually scared him was his brother’s safety at risk, and so maybe they should pay attention this time. Sherlock gave him a bit of an odd look when John put a hand on his lower back to nudge him in the direction of the car door.  

Once they’d gotten in the car, it drove off smoothly. As Sherlock continued his little game of tempting his brother with greasy, lovely street food, Mycroft made a moue of subtle distaste that John decided was his version of wrinkling his nose, and said “You are going to Copenhagen, there has been a murder in a museum.” 

He handed John a tablet, as Sherlock’s hands were still occupied with food. John held it so that Sherlock got a good view. On the tablet was an image of a large, spacious room, and in stark contrast to the white brick walls stood the black, charred skeletal remains of a person, posed mid stride. The killer had left a message - on the back wall, written in huge, sooty letters, were the words ‘YOU’LL GET IT SHERLOCK’ . It sent chills down John’s back, after all, the previous times when villains had deemed it fit to decorate their crime scenes with graffiti featuring Sherlock’s name, it certainly hadn’t been any idle threats.  

Sherlock swiped the screen with a greasy finger, flipping through more pictures, closeups and different angles of the same crime scene. “When was this?” 

Mycroft shifted his grip on his umbrella handle. “It came to my attention some forty minutes ago. The Danish police were alerted to the crime at 19:37 this evening, local time.”

Sherlock wiped his lower lip with his fingers and sucked yogurt off his thumb. “These are forensic images. Restricted. Classified.” He shot Mycroft a glance. “The Danes wouldn’t send this to you.” 

Mycroft inclined his head in recognition of the fact. “There are many ways of retrieving information at my disposal.” 

Sherlock nodded, unsurprised, and continued to scrutinize the images. John frowned. Mycroft didn't go into detail, but it would be very much like Mycroft to have image recognition software snuck into foreign countries’ police databases and coding it to alert him when an image with the word ‘Sherlock’ turned up, wouldn’t it? 

The car stopped, and John was half surprised, half not, to find that they had already arrived at 221b. Mycroft held out a manila folder and a slim, plane ticket-shaped envelope. Sherlock tossed the rest of his kebab carelessly on the car seat and snatched the papers from Mycroft's fingers and slunk out of the car. 

When John put down the tablet and made to follow, Mycroft held him with a stare. “You are to accompany him. He risks returning to locations that have been… bothersome for him in the past. Revisiting may prove detrimental to his resistance to the lure of recreational substances, some of which flows quite freely in this region.” 

“When was Sherlock in Denmark?” 

Mycroft’s expression turned even more neutral, even as he lifted his chin. “Two years ago, nearly to the day.” 

John nodded, he’d suspected that this had to do with whatever Sherlock had been up to when he’d officially been declared dead. “Of course I’ll go with him.”  Mycroft inclined his head, and John got out of the car. 

Even if John had wanted to, refusing Mycroft’s request was out of the question. For one, it was never a good idea to piss off the sole person with power over the care and comfort of your jailed and very pregnant wife. Besides, Sherlock needed him to come along, not only to keep him from relapsing. John doubted that he’d work effectively alone, under the circumstances - the outcome of Moriarty pulling strings from beyond the grave had left John injured, a bullet wound to his buttocks of all places. With Mary imprisoned it had fallen to Sherlock to nurse John back to health. He’d been an odd version of a mother hen, anxious for John to follow his physiotherapy regimen and very keen on keeping him comfortably healing, so much so that eventually they both had gone a bit mad with inactivity. Today’s case had been at John’s insistence, a much needed break in monotony, but it had hardly been challenging Sherlock at all. Sherlock needed a proper case, and honestly, so did John.

When John got to their living room, Sherlock was in his chair with his nose in the manila folder. He spoke without looking up. “Good, it’s settled. Mycroft has pulled some strings, the Danish police are holding the scene for us.” He abruptly got up and pulled out a suitcase from under the sofa. “Better pack. If you want to talk to Mary, do it now. Our flight’s in five hours.” 

Of course it was, John thought, stifling a yawn. “Any idea how long we’ll be out of the country?” 

“Looks like an easy enough case. It shouldn’t be too long,” Sherlock said, grabbing his violin and looking around the room, apparently searching for its travel case.  


The violin? That clearly meant some serious amount of time away. John cleared his throat meaningly. “As long as we’re back in time for, you know, the birth of my firstborn. Due date is April 29th.” 

That stopped him. “Oh, yes. Quite. Of course we’ll make it back in time.” He was looking wide-eyed at John, a little startled, a little hurt. Like he did every time John mentioned the baby. 

“Good.” John nodded to himself and went upstairs to his bedroom to start a Skype session. Mary would be grumpy to be woken up at this hour, but it wasn't as if she hadn’t ample opportunity to sleep in tomorrow. 

He expected that the fact that he and Sherlock would get to enjoy an international crime-solving adventure while she wasn’t free to come with them would really annoy her. He’d figure out some way to include her. 

  
  


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
  


On the plane John had tried to ask about the last time Sherlock was in Denmark, but he had not been very forthcoming. Sherlock spent most of the two hour flight deeply sunk into his smartphone, reading up on Scandinavian languages and downloading Danish weather apps from what John could see from his glances over Sherlock’s shoulder. 

After giving up on conversation John had tried to type up a draft of yesterday’s events for the blog, offline of course, but kept getting distracted by thoughts of what was waiting for them in Copenhagen. Who had left a message for Sherlock in Denmark, of all places? His eyes were grainy with lack of sleep, and in the end he closed his laptop, dozing off.

At the airport they were greeted by a short, stocky woman in a well worn down jacket and gore-tex snow boots. She was holding a printed out sign with Sherlock’s name on it. Her olive-tan skin, black shiny hair, and slanted eyes indicated some sort of undetermined Asian origin. Polynesian, maybe? She regarded them for a moment, clearly unimpressed, before deciding they were worth her effort. 

“Sanne Jensen, Copenhagen police,” she said in a heavy Danish accent, showing her ID as they shook hands. “Come on.” She jerked her head towards the exit in indication of where they were headed and started walking. 

As soon as she got outside she lit a cigarette, even before zipping her jacket up against the cold. John shivered and tightened his scarf. Denmark was much colder than he’d expected and the thin jacket he was wearing didn’t hold off the chill very much. Sherlock seemed unaffected, of course, wearing his usual scarf, gloves and coat, even if the latter somehow had acquired a sleek black fur collar. 

Sanne lead them all the way to the other end of the vast car park, and John quickly worked up some heat hauling their luggage, which, for some reason, had fallen on his lot. He pondered her origins again, and he must have frowned, because Sherlock leaned in close and stage-whispered in his rumbling smooth baritone: “Greenlandish.” 

When John angled his head to meet his gaze, Sherlock saw the question in his eyes. “On her mother’s side,” he explained. “She’s also proficient in hand-to-hand combat, owns a grey Persian cat and plays volleyball in her spare time.”  

John felt his face split in a smile, even as he bumped Sherlock’s shoulder to stop him. “Yeah, that’s enough, thank you.”  

Sanne seemed to be the silent type, and her demeanor didn't exactly invite to conversation. She watched John struggle to fit their luggage in the boot of her car while she exhaled a large cloud of smoke. She stubbed the cigarette butt out by tossing it to the ice-covered ground and stepping on it.  

It was a quiet ride. John was still a bit sleepy and Sherlock was deeply engrossed in his mobile, this time texting profusely. John wondered who he was conversing with; it wasn’t Mycroft - he’d never seen the brothers exchange more than four texts at a time. Wiggins, perhaps? Molly? Catching himself before curiosity got the best of him and he did something rash, like leaning over and sneaking a peek of Sherlock’s phone, John turned his attention to the road.

He had expected that they would head towards the city center, but the road lead away from Copenhagen. They drove north, through a flat snow covered landscape. The weather was clear and cold, smoke rising pillar-straight from farmhouse chimneys and the morning sun was striking glares on iced-over lakes. The world was nearly colourless; the sky a glassy, pale blue.

Before long they arrived at the grounds of the Louisiana museum of modern art, which was situated in a park outside a small town. A sharp digital sign announcing the current exhibitions and opening hours both complemented and subtly contrasted with the 18th century wrought iron gates. A uniformed policeman let them through, and Sanne drove up to a cobblestone courtyard and parked between a Danish police car and a large bronze sculpture vaguely reminiscent of a reclining voluminous woman. The buildings surrounding the courtyard were old and overgrown with ivy, the leafless vines glimmering white with hoarfrost. 

John prepared to do what he usually did when they first encountered a crime scene; hang back, make nice with the police (as Sherlock certainly wasn’t prone to that), and watch his favourite consulting detective outsmart everyone in sight. 

The entrance to the museum itself was a sleek glass addition, now cordoned with police investigation tape. Next to the cordon stood a tall, slim, smartly dressed woman, her copper hair cut close to her head. She was in her early fifties, and held herself with an air of competence and authority. She was speaking on her mobile, but when Sherlock and John got out of the car she pocketed her phone to shake their hands.

“Lillian Larsen, Detective Chief Inspector at the Copenhagen police force. Welcome.” She spoke with a much less heavy accent than Sanne. While she was perfectly polite, John thought he could detect a slight but well hidden annoyance at having to let outsiders in on their turf. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

Sherlock wasted no time, clearly impatient to see the murder scene. “Right. Who found the body?” 

DCI Larsen nodded, unaffected by Sherlock’s lack of manners. “Kersti Dreijer, the curator. She was working late last night to get things in order for a new exhibition. The fire alarm went off, she found the remains burning quite fiercely. She put the fire out and called the police.” 

Sanne, who had lit another cigarette as soon as she was out of the car, came to stand next to them, a bit off to the side. Her phone started to emit whale song noises, and she excused herself to take the call. 

Sherlock went on. “We would like to see the body now.” 

“It’s in the Giacometti wing. Follow me.” 

Sanne cleared her throat. “Might want to wait a moment.” She showed DCI Larsen her phone, and whatever it was made her bite out an exclamation, shaking her head. 

For a moment the two women were quietly arguing in Danish, well DCI Larsen argued and Sanne gave her silent stares back. A raised eyebrow and a shrug said “it’s out of my hands”, clear as anything. Larsen pinched the bridge of her nose, nodded tiredly, and turned back to Sherlock and John. “I’m sorry. We are about to have some company.”

Sherlock turned towards the driveway. “So I can hear”. 

Before John could ask for clarification there was a loud roar of an accelerating car engine and then a vintage Porsche in an odd shade between olive green and mustard yellow sped up the driveway and abruptly stopped a few meters from them, tires screaming. 

Out of the car stepped a woman with looks that matched her car; a brown woolen military coat, aviator shades and long blonde hair. She closed the car door with a thump, and stalked with brisk steps towards them. She was wearing  _ leather  _ trousers, John noted.

DCI Larsen folded her arms across her chest, and gave the woman a stern look. She barked, in Danish, what must have been reprimands, but something in the woman’s clipped and precise retort seemed to spark her interest. 

During this exchange, John took a closer look at the newcomer. She was in her mid to late thirties, of average build and John assessed her to be about as tall as himself. She didn't wear any make-up, but she didn’t need it - her cool Scandinavian beauty was unadorned. Likewise, her messy blonde hair seemed not to be troubled by brushing or styling of any sort. She had an old faded scar on the side of her mouth and chin. Her clothes were efficient, functional and all of good quality, from her sturdy lace-up boots to her black leather gloves. She was armed, John could see the outline of her handgun holstered at her right side through the thick wool of her coat. 

Sherlock leant in close and commented in a rumbling stage whisper: “Easy, John. You are still happily married, may I remind you.” 

At the snide remark the woman took off her shades and turned her cool green eyes on the both of them. Lillian sighed and relented, gesturing at them as she made introductions, “Mr. Holmes here is a consultant with the British law enforcement, and Mr. Watson is his assistant.” 

Since Sherlock didn’t seem inclined to follow common courtesy, John stepped in to shake her hand. As he did so, he  _ might  _ have turned a little light flirtation on, if only by habit. “Well, it’s  _ doctor  _ Watson actually.”

“Saga Norén, Länskrim, Malmö.” To his disappointment she appeared to be completely indifferent to the Watson charm. In fact the way she met his eyes made him feel like she was going through the motions of greeting, that her gestures were rehearsed. Eye Contact, check. State your name, check. Firm handshake, check. 

“Saga,“ Larsen chided. “It would be convenient and, moreover,  _ polite  _ to speak English so our guest can understand us.”

“Oh.” Saga said, and went on to shake Sherlock’s hand. “I apologize. Saga Norén, Malmö County Police.” Sherlock stuck out his hand perfunctory; of course he’d tired of the social niceties already. “Sherlock Holmes, so on, and so forth. Again. Where is the body?”

Saga quirked an eyebrow and turned to Larsen. “Lillian, why are they here?”

“They’re here because there’s reason to believe that this case is linked to an international crime network,” Lillian explained. Feeling that she owed John and Sherlock an explanation as well, she added, “DI Norén is with the Swedish police, and she is our liaison regarding Swedish-Danish trans-regional criminal investigations. She came here because the car we found at the museum’s loading bay has a connection to one of our previously joint investigations.” She gestured towards the entrance. “Shall we?” 

“Why don’t we start at the car?” John interjected. Sherlock shot him a look, and John looked back at him meaningly. If not for DI Norén, they might not have known about the car. Larsen hadn’t mentioned it, and while that might have been an oversight, it was more than likely that the Danish police wanted Sherlock’s access to the crime scene to be as limited as possible. 

  
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
  


Out by the museum’s loading bay, a white van was carelessly parked. John, Sanne and Larsen stood back while DI Norén and Sherlock looked for clues. 

John decided it was time to start asking questions. “Most museums have rigorous security, alarms and cameras and such. How did they manage to break in and put the body in the middle of the museum, undetected?”

“There’s a new exhibition opening on Friday, with extensive re-fittings of the galleries, and security has been reduced to facilitate the work of the contractors,” Lillian said.

John watched Sherlock crawl on his hands and knees to peek under the car. A bit transfixing, that. He turned to Lillian. “From a previously joint investigation, you said. What was it about?”

“About two years ago we had a difficult case with environmentalist terrorists. The main suspect was head of biological research a pharmaceutical corporation, Medisonus. According to Saga’s report, this car was missing from the company inventory, and we now suspect it was used to transport victims and bodies to and from a facility where they were used for experiments with biological weapons. It’s unlikely we’ll find any evidence of that after all this time, but we’ll give it a try.”

John furrowed his brow. “Why hasn't it resurfaced until now?”

“Oh, there could be any number of reasons. Dull,” Sherlock chipped in flippantly as he swept past them to reach Saga, who was regarding the drifts of snow along the walls of the building. “There are traces in the snow of someone unloading large items. Unsurprising.” Sherlock donned one of his big fake smiles. “Do you have a weather app of any decency on your phone, Saga? I may call you Saga, may I not? I need to check last night’s snowfall, and the data roaming would be quite expensive.” That was an outright lie, John knew. Sherlock had spent the flight surfing without a single thought to internet expenses.

Saga barely reacted, just reached into her coat pocket and produced her phone. Sherlock took it and tapped a few times at it, before hastily returning it. “Right. Larsen, ready for the body now!”


	3. Chapter 2

C H A P T E R   T W O 

 

Lillian led them up a flight of stairs, then through a series of glazed pathways meandering through a sculpture garden. The landscape was tranquil, snowsoft lines gently sloping towards a splendid panoramic view of the Øresund Straits, the sea glittering in the morning light. The air was clear and a thin sliver of land lay like a distant blue ribbon on the horizon.

They felt the stench even before they arrived at the Giacometti wing. A pungent smell of smoke, asphalt and burnt meat, and of something sharp and chemical. It made the insides of John’s nose sting a little. 

They entered the room a floor up; it was two stories high, a starkly dramatic space. The far wall was a floor to ceiling window framing the view of a wintry pond and snow-heavy willows like a huge painting. They leant on the banister for a moment and surveyed the scene. 

In the middle of the floor stood a creation of sorts, a grotesque black shape made out of human remains arranged to look like a morbid imitation of the original Giacometti artworks in the same room. The likenesses were striking; charred skeletal parts had been carefully put together to form a tall, thin sculpture that echoed the same associations that the bronzes evoked; a sense of being eroded and reduced to their very core. Even the pose was the same as the nearest sculpture, the corpse was frozen mid stride. The floor surrounding the remains was sooty and covered in a white powder, and a bit away lay a fire extinguisher, emptied. 

The ominous, sooty message was still there on the right hand wall, untouched.  

“I see,” Saga said to Sherlock, “A message for you.”

“Meant as a threat, isn’t it? Sanne asked, coughing a little. “‘You’ll get it?’”

Sherlock steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, focusing on the corpse sculpture. “No,” he said, his voice gone deep and a little breathless, “I think… it’s a  _ challenge _ .”

John snuck a peek at Sherlock. His mouth was relaxed, his cheeks faintly pink and his pupils ever so slightly dilated. Yes, this was just the right fix for Sherlock, a good mystery. Perhaps this would be the thing that set things right again. That helped them slot back into place. It had to. 

“The sculptures are not actually disturbed, at all,” Lillian informed them, “As per order of the British police, the body and the message remain unexamined, but for the rest of it… well, our forensics technicians have already gone over the room.” 

Sherlock snorted. “We’ll see if they could refrain from completely destroying the evidence.” Then he went down to the floor below, all but skipping down the stairs. DI Norén followed him, frowning. 

Sherlock crouched at the base of the mounted body and laid out his toolkit. Oblivious to the fact that John hadn’t followed close on his heel, he barked an order: “Gloves!” 

John started down the stairs, fumbling in his pocket for a pair but stopped when DI Norén extended her hand over Sherlock’s shoulder, nitrile gloves dangling near his face. Sherlock spared the proffered gift a hesitant glance before accepting them, to John’s great surprise. He snapped them on and proceeded to examine the crime scene.

As John continued down the stairs he made himself relax from the small but unexpected sting of irritation that had risen up within him. Where had that come from? After him came Lillian and Sanne, staying a little behind, giving them space to investigate.

Sherlock focused on the morbid sculpture, so John did the same, taking notes to write up later blog entries and taking pictures to show Mary. The body parts were burnt to a crisp, sewn together with metal wire and smeared with a black, sticky tar-like substance. John didn’t deny that he felt a twinge of unease looking at the gruesome display, but that twinge was not entirely unpleasant - it also brought with it a promise of danger and excitement.

Lillian came up to John. “You are a  _ medical  _ doctor, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Lillian smiled. “Maybe you can give us a quick assessment of the remains. Since we were instructed not to touch it, we’ve not been able to analyze the body. All we know so far is that it’s the bones of a male adult -”

“Bones from a male adult are part of it, obviously,” Sherlock interrupted without taking his concentration from the macabre artwork, “but there’s at least two people in there.” John could hear by the tone of his voice that he was all but rolling his eyes. John had to give him that, the number of femurs alone would be tip-off for anyone with even the slightest knowledge of human anatomy. 

Saga had put on gloves of her own and was walking in a wide loop around the room, crouching down now and then to look at something. She stopped by the stairs that they just descended. “Have forensics looked at this box? Or the ladder?”  

Lillian, Sanne and John went over to look. There was a big wooden crate and a ladder neatly stowed away under the stairs. Sanne started to examine the crate, it was smeared with soot and small pools of tar stuck to the bottom of the interior. “This box may have been used to transport the body parts,” she stated. “We’ll inform the technicians.”

Saga left them abruptly, going up the stairs. John glanced at Lillian. “Is she always this... curt? 

Lillian sighed wryly. “Yes, she is.”

John huffed a small laugh. “Yeah, I know how that is.” He stepped back, looking up at Saga. She was over by a large window overlooking the sculpture garden, looking out at the view using a small pair of binoculars. ”What is she doing?”

Lillian had joined him, also looking at Saga. “No idea. But she usually sees things quicker than the rest of us.”

“Oh. Of course.” Sherlock looked up from his magnifier, an expression of reluctant realization on his face. “Larsen, you should send some forensics down to the shore.”

John knew he should be used to the sudden twists of Sherlock’s mind, but still. “Huh?”

Sherlock continued to study the bones, answering absentmindedly. “It’s simple. The culprit’s car is still here. The culprit isn’t. Unless the Danish police are even more incompetent than their British counterparts, and haven’t been able to ascertain that the building is free of corpse-sculpting criminals.” He touched a tar-smeared clavicle with a long graceful finger, and sniffed it thoughtfully. “Could have walked to town, but no footprints in the snow. Also, security is lax in the  _ building  _ due to the re-fittings, but not at the park gate nor along the fence, and there are no other exits. Ergo, the culprit had to have left by sea. There should be evidence of a boat having made land along the shore within the museum’s grounds.”

John turned that over in his head, along with Sherlock’s grudgingly impressed expression. “So DI Norén got that, what? Minute and a half before you did?”

“Yes, well...” Sherlock grumbled, bending down over the remains again. 

“Lillian,” Saga called from upstairs, “look for evidence of a small boat down by the shore.”

Lillian nodded, an eyebrow lifted. “On it.” She took her phone and went away to make a phone call. 

Saga came back downstairs and went to stand in front of the wall with the writing, scrutinizing it. “It’s hand smeared, see?” She pointed at a few places where the shape of a hand was visible. She went closer. “But the perpetrator used gloves. I can’t see any fingerprints anywhere. This was very well planned.” She looked at Sherlock over her shoulder. “You called it “a challenge?””

Sherlock nodded and went over to stand next to her. “A riddle, of sorts. For me. _ You  _ will get it, Sherlock.”  

They stared at the message for a long moment, musing over the huge charry letters. In the slanted light of the great window Sherlock’s face was relaxed as he basked in the wonder and possibilities of this new case. Sherlock was so beautiful that John had to hold his breath, just for a second. He shook his head a little to clear it. There was no place for those kind of thoughts now. Not anymore.

Sherlock suddenly turned to Saga and looked at her with an assessing gaze. “This morning; was it for business or pleasure?” 

“I’m sorry, what?” Saga frowned, tearing her gaze from the message to look at Sherlock.

Oh, John knew this game. Sherlock was going for one of his impressive deducing stunts, displaying his brilliance by reading a person’s favorite breakfast food from the state of their shoes or some amazing performance like that. John smiled smugly, settling in to watch Sherlock showing off.

“The man you visited in prison this morning.” Sherlock clarified, stepping closer to Saga. “Which was it? Business, as in visiting an inmate in the course of your work as a police detective? Or was it pleasure, as in visiting a friend?”

Saga shot a betrayed look at Lillian, but Lillian shook her head. “I haven’t told him anything,” she said. 

“Then how does he know about Martin?” Saga asked.

Sherlock looked very pleased with himself. “Well, I didn’t  _ know _ , not until you just confirmed it. First name basis. He’s a friend, then?” 

“Yes, he’s a friend,” she stated, shooting a defiant look at Lillian, who looked back with stony disapproval. Saga turned back to Sherlock, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “Why do you ask about him?”  

“How do you feel about the violin?” he countered, obviously enjoying her confusion at the unexpected question. His words threw John back in time, and he felt a surprisingly painful stab of betrayal as he realized that Sherlock used the exact same tactics to win Saga over, as he had used on John himself when they first met. 

Saga frowned. “The violin? What has that to do with anything?”

“I play the violin when I’m thinking. A lot of people find me ‘difficult’, and I’m told that I’m rude, self-centered, manipulative, stubborn, narcissistic, a show-off, and a drama queen… Have I missed anything John?” He looked round at John, who was too stunned by shock to answer. That was apparently of no consequence to Sherlock, the utter berk, as he quickly turned his attention back at Saga. “I don’t play by the rules. On the other hand, I  _ always  _ crack the case.”

“Why are you telling me these things?”

“It’s only fair that you should know my bad points, if we’re to work together on this case.” 

That made Lillian’s and Sanne’s eyebrows shoot up and they exchanged a look. John frowned. He had to admit it was rare, Sherlock actively seeking close collaboration with the police, Lestrade excepted, but what he wanted to know was why Sherlock wanted to  _ impress  _ her? What in the actual fuck?  

Saga wasn’t too easily swayed, though. “We’ve only just met and you’re trying to what? Recruit me?”

Sherlock had turned to the body-part-sculpture again, squinting at it. “Problem?”

“I’d have to talk to my superiors.” Saga shrugged. “Explain  _ how _ you knew about Martin, and I’ll consider it.” 

That seemed to be the magic words. Sherlock turned and was by her side in two swift steps. “Fine. You didn't come here to this crime scene because of the inquiry about the car, you just could’ve sent an email. You were already nearby. That means you had a reason to be here in Denmark today. Now, your fingertips -” 

He took her by the wrist and held her hand up and removed the nitrile glove. Saga stiffened, looked at Sherlock’s face, down at her own hand held in Sherlock’s, and then back up again, a puzzled expression on her face. Each fingertip was stained black.

“Your fingertips are marked with fresh fingerprint ink, so you’ve been somewhere with high security, where visitors are registered; fingerprints logged. Closest high security facility is an all-male prison outside of Copenhagen, roughly thirty minutes from here, less with  _ your  _ car, of course. You were there this morning, as confirmed by the plotted route in the map service in your phone. Yes, I checked your last used apps.” 

His eyes narrowed as he turned her hand over to take a closer look at the ink stains. “You’ve visited at least twice in the last few weeks; the newer ink is overlapping older, faded marks. Frequent visits, that implies a friend, relative, loved one. However, the contact list in your phone is neatly organized, none of them labeled family, or any derivation thereof. Not a family member, then. Possible friends are just first names, no other information except that their phone numbers are all Swedish, and the man is in a Danish prison. So perhaps not a friend. The other possibility is that the visits are scheduled interviews in a police investigation.” With her hand still held in his own, Sherlock raised his eyes and looked up at her intently. “Work, or pleasure.” 

Saga pulled her hand free, as if a bit uncomfortable with the contact, even as she kept her eyes locked on Sherlock’s. “Your conclusion is correct.” She was impressed enough to be tempted by Sherlock’s offer, John could tell. 

Sherlock frowned. “One thing, though. Danish correctional facilities don’t use the antiquated method of taking fingerprints manually, normally they use scanners. But not for you…” His face opened as realization hit him. “Oh. You pissed the guards off.”

DI Norén regarded him coolly, crossing her arms. “I piss a lot of people off.” She glanced at the writing on the wall. “So do you, I take it.”

“A minor consequence of not playing by the rules.” Sherlock’s mouth pulled into a small smug smile knowing he’d won her over. “So what is he in for, your convict friend?” 

“Murder.” 

Sherlock nodded once, as he’d expected nothing less. 

Saga turned to the sculpture of burned bones. “What have you found in there, then?”

“The remains were already burnt before they were brought here and arranged in this fashion. The piece must have been assembled right there in the room and then set alight again, judging by the soot on the floor and the acrid smell. Of course, the fire was just to attract attention.” He pointed to the fire detector. “To char bones this severely a fire must reach at least 700 degrees Celsius , the wooden beams of the ceiling would have spontaneously combusted a few hundred degrees lower than that. They are intact, if a bit sooty.” He pointed at the beams in question. “Also, the remains are burnt to various degrees, some still have soft tissue, some are nearly completely destroyed by the fire. Either the remains have burnt at different temperatures, for different amounts of time, or some of the bones were in different stages of decomposition prior to burning, or any of these circumstances combined. I’d wager that some of the remains are fresher than others, specifically the skull. But I’d need a coroner’s report and an arson report to be sure.” He focused on the skull. “In these type of cases, there’s naturally very few signs as to the identity of the victims. Now, the skull shows minor and precise scarring at the hairline, under jaw and behind ears, indicating incisions from reconstructive surgery. To know more, I need a lab. Whoever’s behind this knows what they’re doing.”  

Saga took a step closer and took a long peek into the the corpse's mouth, the jaw hanging halfway off its joint. “Lillian, call Hans to arrange for me to join this investigation,” she demanded. 

Lillian shook her head, exasperated. “No, Saga, that’s not how things wor-” 

Saga continued, interrupting her. “You are wrong about the skull. The rest of the remains may be more recently deceased, but the skull has been dead for two years.”

“How do you know that?” Sherlock’s eyes were narrowed in annoyance to have missed anything, but John could see a spark of admiration in there as well. John agreed, his own mouth was half open in surprise.

Saga backed away and looked Sherlock square in the eye. “Because I know who it is.”


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Thanks ever so much to Birth of the Phoenix for your wonderful beta reading!_  
>  New note: I rewrote a small part at the end for long term plot purposes.

The police station was a stern stone building taking up a whole block in central Copenhagen. They arrived just past lunchtime. Or way, way past it, according to the rumbling in John’s stomach.

They followed Lillian and Sanne through one of the huge neoclassical arches, and all at once they entered a circular courtyard, a huge space lined with pillars of pale sandstone, two stories high. It was the kind of space that affected you physically, crossing it made you feel like going out on a stage. The sky above them seemed both more constrained and yet greater than outside in the city.

Sanne disappeared inside to get an investigation room ready. Sherlock and Saga were busy with their phones and Lillian was leaning against one of the pillars, lighting a cigarette and basking in the van, wintery sunlight.

“Do you know some place where I could get some takeaway lunch food?” John asked her. “We’ve not had breakfast yet.”

“There’s a café that makes a decent smørrebrød through there and across the street,” she said, pointing at the archway from where they came. She smiled a bit at John’s confusion at the foreign word. “Sandwiches. They have good smoothies too.”

“Oh, right. Thank you.”

John nodded and was just about to leave when he decided to ask her something that had been on his mind since the museum.

“I picked up a bit of tension when Saga talked about her friend in prison. Martin, was it?”

Lillian’s face didn't move much, but she seemed a bit more guarded all the same. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

Lillian let out a tired exhale of smoke. “Martin Rohde was one of my best men.” She took another drag of her cigarette. “He was my friend and I respected him professionally, he was a damn fine cop. He had a few bad sides, can’t deny that. Headstrong, liked the ladies a bit too much. Got hung up on ideas sometimes. But a damn fine cop.” She paused, looking over at Saga, who stood some distance away, arguing on the phone. “You’ve met Saga, so you get why people would think she’d be a piece of work. There was a case, a murder. The jurisdiction between us and Sweden was unclear. I sent Martin. He and Saga started working together on the case, quite successfully. It seemed unlikely, but somehow they just... got on.  We were all surprised.” She tapped off some of the cigarette ash onto the paving. “Two years ago she put him behind bars. He’s in for life.”

“Was he guilty?”

Lillian exhaled slowly, there was sadness there. “That’s just it. He was.”  

She stared into the distance for a while, then closed her eyes. “In a way I am grateful for what Saga did. I might not have had the strength to perform my duties as an officer of the law. I might have let a murderer walk free, because he was my friend.” She looked John in the eye. “Don’t tell her that. She might file a complaint.” John could see that she was only half joking.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” He smiled reassuringly. “So, the café’s that way?”

“That’s right.” She checked her phone. “We’ll take a quick lunch break as well. Sanne says the room will be ready by 12:30, and Hans should be here by then, if the traffic on the bridge is light.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Jens Hansen,” Saga said. “Also known as Sebastian Sandstrod, also known as the Truth Terrorist.” She put up a black-and-white photo of a man with a narrow face on a whiteboard, next to some printed-out pictures of the corpse-sculpture. She wrote “Victim 1” over the photo, and turned around to face the investigation team, directing the rest of her focus on Sherlock. It was clear that every last one of the other people in the room knew exactly who the man in the photo was.

A few more people had been added to their group, but they still weren’t many enough to crowd the small meeting room they had gathered in. Sherlock had claimed one of the chairs at the back and propped his feet up at the table. He took out his phone, glancing subtly at the others.

One new face was a sharply dressed young man, apparently the computer specialist. He was typing rapidly on a laptop at the same time as he was scrolling through crime scene images on a large led screen next to the white board.  

Another man, Saga’s boss, had come over from Sweden. He was leafing through the pages of some report or another, leaning against the glass wall. It was unclear if he would stay involved in the investigation, or if he was here just to handle red tape for Saga. What he  _ was  _ involved in was a secret affair with Lillian. It was glaringly obvious, especially by the way he positioned himself to avoid looking at her too much.

Lillian was much better at hiding their involvement, refraining from tipping over into overly cold professionalism. “The coroner has started to piece together the two separate sets of remains,” she said. “He has been able to confirm what Saga found - the skull, the vertebrae, and likely several other skeletal parts from the sculpture belong to Jens Hansen. As for the other victim, it’s at least another day before there’s anything to tell us. The forensics from the museum and the shoreline needs a couple of more days, and the arson report could be as much as a week away. Hans?”

“As of today Saga has been assigned to assist on this case for a week. The connection to Sweden is not all that clear, so unless things change and the case prove to be more tied to crime in Sweden we are hard pressed to return personnel to home districts. So let’s not waste any time. While we wait for those reports, we’ll need to look into the leads that we do have.”

Saga nodded emphatically.  She fastened her eyes on Sherlock. “Are you paying attention?”

“I’m multitasking. Saves time, doesn’t it?”

Browsing through a multitude of Swedish and Danish news articles from 2012, Sherlock read about the Truth Terrorist, the case, his capture and trial. It was an impressive case. An amazing one, one he would have loved to solve.

“Jens Hansen committed at least 25 murders, some of them performed years in advance of his well planned and equally as well executed crescendo of crimes and terror acts.” Sherlock said, unable to strain the finer notes of admiration from his voice. He looked up at Lillian. “That makes him the worst Danish serial killer since the ‘Vesterbro baby burner’, and by far the most clever.” He scrolled down the page. “He even gained quite a following on the internet, stirring up the public and urging them to engage in arson. Impressive.”

The door opened and John came in, carrying a takeaway bag in each hand. “Hope I’m not too late. Got some coffees for you lot.” He smiled at the room at large. They all perked up at the mention of coffee. Well played, Sherlock thought. Bringing peace offerings in the form of light stimulants was a good way to remain on good terms with the local authorities.

Saga stared at him in response. “You  _ are  _ late.” She didn’t accept the coffee, even resisting John's most disarming smile. John didn't seem put out by that, just put her cup in front of her on the table, with an expression on his face that said 'eh, can’t win them all'. Good, that meant that he wasn’t too interested in Saga, his previous flirtation aside. Sherlock could relax his vigilance a little. It wouldn't do to have John stray from Mary now, not when the baby was here soon.

When everyone had their coffees, John came over to lean against the wall next to Sherlock. He’d gotten them each a rye bread sandwich and some kind of smoothie - light yet nutritious food, which was a part of John’s attempts to get Sherlock to eat regular meals while working. He even called it 'case food'.

John took a bite of his sandwich. “So, what did I miss?”

While Lillian filled John in, Sherlock continued reading about Jens Hansen, sending John texts with the salient points gathered from the news articles. John ignored the steady stream of text alerts beeping from his pocket.

Sherlock took a sip of the smoothie. It was delicious, which annoyed him a little. John practically  _ radiated  _ smugness, he could just feel it. Despite himself, he took another sip. “I need the background on Hansen - education, career, family relations, financial situation.  _ Anything _ , psychological or practical, that might have turned him onto serial killing. Details!”

Lillian nodded. “I will get you everything we have on him. But in short;” she cleared her throat, as if the things she was about to say were difficult to get out. “Many years ago, Jens was an officer with the Copenhagen police. His wife and son died in a car accident, and he was never the same after that. His work performance suffered, and eventually he was asked to leave the force. He was evicted from his home and spent some time living on the streets. A few years later he was found dead in his mobile home, face shot clean off-”  

Sherlock interrupted her. “Let me guess. You never checked for fingerprints or DNA, didn’t even had the body autopsied. A foolish sign of sentiment, respect for your former colleague or some such nonsense.” He barely waited for her mouth to open in an indignant protest before interrupting her again. “Right. Jens faked his death and went underground. Sometime after that he had plastic surgery to change his appearance.”

John gestured with his sandwich, pointing at Jens’s photograph. “That explains the scars you saw on the skull.”

“Mm. He didn't want anyone to recognize him, that means he stayed right here while carrying out his preparations.”

“Yes,” Lillian confirmed, “Jens stayed in Copenhagen while he planned and executed his murders and acts of terrorism.”

”Why did they call him the 'Truth terrorist'?” John asked, popping his last piece of rye bread in his mouth.

Hans cleared his throat. “He claimed his crimes were committed in the name of truth. Superficially, the crimes pointed out injustices, telling ‘the truth’ about problems in Denmark’s and Sweden’s societies. You could say that it was a sort of ‘fake activism’. Underneath the pretence all his crimes were motivated by personal grudge, hatred and vengeance directed towards certain people who had mistreated him, and in his mind caused his misfortune. We caught him, sent him to prison.”

“So, what does this mean for this case?” Sanne said and sipped her coffee, “Jens died two years ago, we all know who killed him. Someone else is behind the sculpture.”

“Yeah,” the computer guy chimed in, “Talk about an ironclad alibi.”

John frowned. “Allright. I don’t follow. Who killed Jens?”

“Saga’s convict friend,” Sherlock scoffed, pointing at Saga. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“That's right, the Danish officer of that investigation was Martin Rodhe," Lillian confirmed. "Jens and Martin were once police partners as well as good friends. Martin was one of the people Jens wanted vengeance from, as he believed that Martin caused the accident that killed his wife and son. We caught Jens, but not before he killed Martin’s eldest son. In the aftermath of this tragedy Martin and his therapist visited Jens in prison several times, as part of rehabilitation.”

“Some sort of victim-perpetrator reconciliation therapy?” John ventured.

Lillian nodded. “Needless to say, the therapy failed. On one such visit, Jens was murdered.”

There was a pause of uncomfortable silence. John’s pocket beeped from another text Sherlock sent him.

“Well.” John said, clearing his throat and inconspicuously turned his phone off. “So, if Jens’s killer has an alibi for last night, how did the perpetrator get ahold of the body?”

“Jens’s body was autopsied, as is the procedure with murder victims," Saga supplied. "After the evidence was secured the body was sent to cremation.”

Sanne got up from her seat. “Somewhere between the morgue and the crematorium the corpse must have gone missing. Been replaced, even. We need to find out what happened to it after it left the morgue. Also, it was kept from decomposing for two years. I’m thinking freezer box.”

She wrote: “Morgue - Crematorium” and “Freezer box” on the board, under Jens’s photo.

“Another thing,” John said, “the bodies couldn’t have been burnt just anywhere. Sherlock, what temperature did you say it was?”

“700 degrees Celsius,” Saga cut in, when Sherlock didn't bother to answer.

“Right," John said in the tone of voice that usually meant he was annoyed with Sherlock for some indiscernible reason. "You can’t achieve that temperature in an ordinary fireplace. So, high temperature, likely with possibility to regulate the levels of combustion. Sounds a lot like a crematorium to me.”

“We’ll send a unit to the crematorium to see their records," Lillian decided. "Bring them in for questioning if we need to.”

“The perpetrator  _ would  _ need access to a furnace or an incinerator," Saga said, frowning. "But in Sweden, crematoriums are run by the state, and are therefore under rigid control. It would be difficult to use a crematorium for unlawful practices. How is it in Denmark?

“Crematoriums are run by the town district, we do have regulations here as well.” Sanne said, slightly offended. “But I see what you mean. We need to look at other options a well.”

“What kinds of high temperature facilities would be less exposed to scrutiny?” Saga asked.

“Pet crematoriums don’t have the same regulations,” Lillian offered.

“Andy?" Sanne asked. "What are you thinking?”

The computer guy had his fingers up to his mouth and a far away look in his eyes. “What about disused brickworks? My granddad used to make tiles and bricks for a living. There used to be many small-scale kilns spread out all over the countryside of both Denmark and Southern Sweden. Nowadays, the brickmaking in Sweden has come to an end, and the Danish brick industry has dwindled to just a handful of businesses.”

“The disused ones, are some of them still operational?”

“Yeah, sure,” Andy said. “There could be a hundred places to burn a body in this region.”

“Andy, I want a list of all the disused tileries in Denmark," Saga decided. "I’ll find out about the Swedish ones.”

“Check for glassworks too, disused or still in use, and any other high temperature handicrafts. Potteries, blacksmith’s workshops. There’s an artistic, handcrafted element to the sculpture," Hans added. "What else can we investigate?”

“What about the boat?" Sanne asked. "Andy, you got anything on the possible routes?”

“Nothing to go on, no.” Andy’s fingers flickered over the keyboard and a satellite image over the Øresund Strait appeared on the screen, superimposed with ferry and cargo routes. Sherlock regarded the short distance between the Danish and Swedish coastlines. The culprit could have easily reached any number of small fishing villages in both countries during the night; by sea they were all within an hour or two from the museum.

As if following his thoughts, Andy typed a few commands and a circle of the map was highlighted, originating from the museum shore. “Basically, the sea in Øresund is easily navigable, even for small and medium sized ships. The waters are shallow, so we assume a smaller vessel, such as a jolly boat. the top speed is at least six knots, or 10 kilometers per hour.” A handful of red dots lit up along the Danish coast, indicating ports and harbours. “But the boat could easily be twice as fast or more, or go for more than an hour, or head out to dock to a larger vessel, which would increase the speed.” The diameter of the circle doubled, and Sherlock noted that Helsingør as well as Copenhagen fell within the parameter, as well as a notable length of the Swedish coastline. Several more red dots sprinkled the shores, and two popped up on one fairly large island in the middle of the strait.

“48 possible mooring places," Lillian read from the screen. "That’s not counting natural harbours or private piers. Better to wait for any forensics finds on the boat, see if we can issue a description.”

“What about coastguard reports?” Hans asked.

“I’ve requested the traffic information from the area," Andy replied. "What I got so far is that there were no AIS-registered vessels passing at that time of night, but I doubt they would broadcast their route. We shouldn’t assume that the boat is in the AIS-system.”

“OK, so nothing on the getaway route yet. What about the way in?”

Andy pulled up a viewing programme on the screen. “I requested the traffic footage from the night of the crime, and compiled the files to see if anything would turn up. This is the first I could find.”

He played a sequence of dark, grainy clips, showing the white van crossing the bridge from Sweden, entering Denmark.

“So he came from Sweden?” Saga asked.

"He did," Andy confirmed. On screen the van appeared again, and again from various angles of the traffic cameras. “I haven’t finished it all, but so far they don’t try to hide their route, or take any sideroads.” He froze the clip. The camera was aimed to get pictures of the drivers. It showed a rather hunched-over figure in the driver's seat, wearing a dark jacket and gloves. A baseball cap blocked the view of most of the person’s face. “As you can see the driver conceals his face, maybe even tries to disguise his build, the way he crouches.”

Lillian glanced at Hans. “A professional?”

Hans's eyes were riveted on the image of the perpetrator. “Looks like it.”

“Wasn’t the car connected to a case you had before?" John cut in. "The human experiment, biological weapons, eco-terrorist case?”

“Well, that’s under investigation,” Lillian said.

John raised his eyebrows slightly. “Why not just ask the perpetrator?”

“She’s dead. She fled after an attack on the EU environment meet. We’d never had found her unless somebody got to her her first. She was executed in an abandoned warehouse in Helsingør harbour.”

Sherlock raised a mental eyebrow. Hm. That sounded familiar, didn't it?

John shook his head. “Just a feeling I have, but this case is linked to one, maybe two, of the most serious cases in Scandinavia,  _ and  _ it’s linked to Sherlock. It’s going to be bad.”

“Or wonderful," Sherlock interjected, "depending on perspective. Now, Saga, I’m curious. How did you know the skull belonged to Jens?”

“The teeth of the skull matched Jens’s dental records,” Saga explained.

Sherlock nodded, it was what he’d suspected.

Lillian looked skeptical. “Yeah? How did you know they matched?”

Saga shot Lillian a confused glance, narrowing her eyes. She looked to Hans who gave her a small nod. “I looked at the teeth. I have seen the dental records after we caught him, and again after he was killed. They matched.”

Lillian was taken aback. “But that is two years ago.”

“Yes. But it is highly unlikely that the teeth of a victim should change after his death, even after a prolonged amount of time.”

“Very good, Saga,” Hans said. He looked proud and quietly impressed, and not at all surprised.

Saga still seemed a little bewildered, but she shook it off and continued. “Another thing to consider is the scene of the crime. Why a museum?”

“He chose this museum for the access to the sea," Sanne mused. "Might not be the only reason, but it’s one of them.”

"And I think he chose it because of the artworks already on display," Hans said. "The sculptor displays an artistic streak. He wants to be as great as Giacometti, and puts his own transformed version in the same room?” He paused. "I don't think this is the first time he was here. He might be a frequent visitor."

Lillian gave him a thoughtful look. "We'll need to check employee registres, visitor logs, scan through their security footage from, say, six months back?" She made notes of this, tapping on her phone.

John frowned. “The sculptures, the setting. It is all very elaborate, sophisticated even. Why would someone go to all that trouble?”

Sherlock looked up from his phone. “To catch my attention, I would think.”

“Yes. Another lead is the connection to you, Sherlock,” Saga stated. She wrote Sherlock’s name on the whiteboard. “Have you had any previous involvement with Jens Hansen? Remember, he might have had other aliases.”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Do you have any idea of what the connection might be?" Saga asked. "The perpetrator addressed you personally.”

“I have several ideas, but I don't  _ know  _ yet. That’s the beauty of it. The puzzle.“ He trailed off, focusing on an exclusive interview with Hansen in one of Magnussen’s Danish tabloid magazines.

Hansen hadn’t seemed all too disappointed with life in prison. Perhaps prison was more than he expected to have at the end of his crime spree. Many escalating serial killers never expected to come out of their plans alive. There were photographs, and Jens’s wry, slightly sneering smile spoke for itself. Looking at it Sherlock felt a dark frisson of danger, very similar to what he felt before. With Moriarty.

“We need to know more about Jens," Sherlock decided. "It is no coincidence that it is his body in the sculpture. Why was his body chosen for this? It is significant.” Jens had patiently made extensive efforts and meticulous plans to exact a terrible revenge, and clad it all in the guise of social justice. It must have cost time and money. How did he fund his crimes?

He got up. “Who knew Jens? Any relatives? Anyone who can tell us about his personality?”

“No relatives, except for his mother. I doubt we’ll get any useful information from her. She’s almost eighty and suffers from severe Alzheimer's," Lillian said. "The warden of the prison, or perhaps the guards might be able to tell us something."

“Martin," Saga said quietly. "He knew Jens.”

“He did," Lillian agreed, resigned. "Okay, I’ll call the prison.” She took out her phone and left the room, followed by Hans, and by that the meeting was over. Sanne and Andy also left, presumably to go work on some of the new information.

Saga stayed and scrutinized the pictures of the crime scene, lost in concentration. John had finished his sandwich and had started on Sherlock's, munching on it and texting Mary.  

Sherlock regarded Saga. She was highly intelligent, and oddly fascinating. Unbidden, deductions came to him, dancing around her. 'Single.' 'Awake 29 hours.' 'Shot in the line of duty.'  'Lonely.' 'Tone-deaf.'

Suddenly she shot him a look over her shoulder: “So, what does it mean? The message? Do you get it?”

Sherlock shook his head. “It means there will be more bodies.”


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Birth of the Phoenix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Birth_of_the_Phoenix) did great beta work for this chapter, and I am forever grateful.

As most of the group left the room to go about their business, John stayed and watched Saga and Sherlock. 

It was odd, Sherlock looking at Saga like that, like well, like she was a puzzle he hadn’t decided he wanted to solve. He was supposed to focus on the case, the terrific, wonderfully exciting case. There shouldn’t be any brain capacity left for staring forlornly at new strange women in leather pants. And yet. Yeah, something was going on, alright.

Saga didn’t notice, of course.  _ She  _ was focused on the case. So much so that she almost seemed unaware that they were still there in the room with her. 

John felt a rising irritation at his own thoughts. Why couldn’t he let go of this old wistfulness? 

It wasn't long before Sanne came back, carrying three archive boxes, with a rather thin manila folder on top. “There you go,” she said. “The files on Jens Hansen.”

She handed the boxes to John, who raised his eyebrows. They felt surprisingly light. “That’s it?” Physical evidence and everything?”

Sanne shrugged and pointed at the boxes and the folder respectively. “This is from his time with the force and his fake suicide, and this is from his death. Most of the files on his crimes are in the archive in Malmö.”

John pressed his irritation down and smiled, wide and insincere. “We’ll need all of that too.” 

Saga glanced over her shoulder at them. “I’ve already arranged for you to have the reports delivered. Where do you stay?”

John looked at Sherlock, who was deeply focused in his phone again. “Sherlock. Where are we staying?”

“Hm?”

“I’m assuming that Mycroft has arranged some sort of accommodations for us. What’s the address?”

Sherlock didn't even look at him. “Busy.  _ You _ give it to them.”

John rolled his eyes. “ _ I _ don’t have the address. You tell them.”

“Deleted it. Scroll through your texts, I’m sure I sent it to you.”

John ground his teeth and found the address among a myriad of texts with links and news articles, some of which was in Danish. He showed Saga the address from his screen, there was no way he’d be able to pronounce that. 

Saga tapped on her phone. “The physical evidence is in the archive, you're allowed to visit and examine the evidence there, but you’re not allowed to take anything with you.” 

“We’ll go there tomorrow,” Sherlock decided. 

Lillian opened the door but didn’t come in. “Saga, I’ve scheduled a visitation appointment this evening. Talk to Martin. Bring Holmes and Watson.”

Saga nodded, and Lillian left again. 

“Come with me to the crematorium?” Sanne asked Saga. She turned to John and Sherlock. “You guys could meet Saga at the prison later.”

Sherlock was back nose deep in his phone, so John answered for him. “Yes. That’ll be fine.”  

Sanne called Andy over and gave him her car keys. 

“You don’t want to come along to the crematorium?”John asked as they followed Andy outside.

Sherlock shook his head. “They won’t find anything of consequence.” 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Mycroft had actually rented them a whole flat in Copenhagen, not that John should be surprised. 

Andy helped John carrying the luggage and the archive boxes into the six story building. Sherlock pressed the top button in the elevator and when they arrived he magically produced a set of keys, opened the door and stepped into the narrow entryway. He hung his scarf and greatcoat on one of the pegs on the wall without looking and continued in one motion over to the luxurious sofa as if he already knew the place. John put the luggage down in the middle of the floor, stretching his back and looking around. 

“Wow,” Andy sighed, putting the archive boxes on a side table and eyeing the spacious living room. The far wall was all floor to ceiling windows and clean Scandinavian designer furniture were placed around the room in that sparse-looking way that John recognized from high-end decorating magazines. “Good money in private detecting, huh?”

“Not really,” John said, distracted. Sherlock had taken his suitcase over to the kitchen counter and was actually unpacking things. Wonders would never seize. ”We have gathered a nice set of good connections over the years, though.”

John bid Andy goodbye and went for a look around the flat. The shiny black tile of the entryway continued into the tiny kitchen nook, which was fitted with a shiny coffee machine. John found a kettle too, a box of teabags and an assortment of take out menus. Next to the kitchenette was the door to the bathroom, which was small, clean and functional. 

The rest of the flat had smooth wooden floorboards and white walls, from the main room to the two  bedrooms. The light and airy feel of the rooms made John feel a tad out of place.

Best of all, there was a balcony stretching along the facade, with doors from the main room and also, John found to his delight, from one of the bedrooms. He hurried to to put his luggage in that room  before Sherlock could claim it. 

After unpacking, John took a step outside and found that the balcony was roomy enough to house two café chairs, a small round table, a few pots of dead flowers and a oversized ashtray, or if it perhaps was a very ugly sculpture. The view was overlooking a park which probably was lush with greenery in summer, but now was barren brown with naked trees and lumps of melted snow by the street  corners. Still, some happy clusters of crocus in purple, white and saffron yellow dotted the ground here and there.  

Looking back in at the main room through the glass balcony doors John had to make a retake. While John had gone around inspecting the flat, Sherlock had been busy. The kitchenette had been transformed into a small but impressive chemical lab, with beakers, pipettes and condensing tubes. There was even a Bunsen burner. Sherlock must have had the equipment in his suitcase, a portable lab of some kind. On the breakfast table was two laptops, a printer and a microscope. The wall over the sofa had been adorned with several pictures of the corpse-sculpture, which Sherlock must have pilfered at the police station. The sofa itself housed a repose consulting detective, flat on his back, eyes closed, violin on his belly and slowly sliding his finger tips up and down the strings, over and over. John looked at him until he couldn't anymore. Then he went back inside.

Sherlock’s clothes were still unpacked, if the still-fat duffel bag was anything to go by. 

“I took the one with the balcony.” John cocked his head to indicate his room. “I’ll put the rest of your luggage in the other, shall I?”

Sherlock didn't open his eyes. “That’s fine. Won’t be using it much.”

It took John about a minute or two to put Sherlock’s things away, neatly organized as they were. After he was done he went into his own room and decided to set up his own laptop and test the WiFi. The connection was good, but Mary had marked her status as “away”. That usually meant counseling or prenatal checkup. If it was counseling she would be grumpy, so he kept his fingers crossed for checkup. John sent her a message asking her for a Skype session this evening. Then he checked out the links Sherlock had bombarded him with during the police briefing.

When John came back out Sherlock was up again. He sat by the breakfast table, checking something in the microscope, jotting down notes. 

John knew better than to ask him what he was studying. “Magnussen was from Copenhagen. Many of the articles you sent me was from media organizations he owned. Do you think this could be part of some sort of revenge from the grave?”

Sherlock looked up from the lens and gave John an appreciative look. He put his left index finger to his lips, just touching the cupid’s bow. “It is possible it is Magnussen’s work, some of it anyway.” He pouted and adjusted the focal depth. “Mycroft sends me to tidy up his mistakes, as usual.” 

“What do you mean?”

Sherlock’s eyes widened a bit, as if he’d just realized he’d let something slip. He opened his mouth to answer, but just then there was a was a loud buzz from the door phone. “Get that, will you?”

It was the Swedish evidence arriving. John let them in, signed some forms he couldn’t read, and then box upon box of evidence was rolled into the main room. 

Sherlock had returned to the microscope. John figured he might as well try to be useful. “Do you want me to start on the evidence?”

“Go ahead, as long as you stop distracting me. I need to think.”

A bit at a loss, John looked around at the stacks of boxes. Scratching his head, he decided that he might as well start with the Danish evidence. He sat down in the sofa, which was very comfortable for something so boxy and hard-looking, and opened the manila folder. 

The text was in incomprehensible Danish, but at least the medical reports were clear enough, and the photos spoke for themselves. Death by poisoning. Martin’s and Jens’s fingerprints and toxic residue on a paper cup. Pretty clear cut case. John frowned at the folder. Something didn’t add up. If he didn’t have any next of kin, where were Jens’s belongings? Wouldn’t there be anything left from his year in prison? 

Moving on, John got started at the Swedish boxes. Unlike the Danish, Saga had included a binder with an English summary of the salient points of the case, he did appreciate that. He leafed through it, marveling despite himself at Jens’s intricate and ruthless deeds. He must have harbored such magnificent, ice cold fury. 

There was also quite a bit of non-written evidence to go through; CD’s with footage from traffic and security cameras, presentations of  TT’s various promotional material from his web pages and even a little online animation. The short film felt odd, almost familiar. The animation technique used cut-out photographs of real people and told a tale of a policeman being beaten down by rioting thugs, his head pasted onto a random uniformed body, his face enhanced so that he was sure to be recognized while his tiny arms waved mechanically up and down. It ended with him falling down in a growing pool of blood.

Sherlock’s phone rang. It was right next to John on the coffee table, and he answered it by reflex. “Sherlock’s phone.”

It was Saga. “I’m on my way to the prison. Meet me there in fifteen minutes,” she said and hung up.

“There’s a number to a taxi service on the board by the kitchen,” Sherlock said without looking up. 

John stifled a sigh, and got up to phone for a taxi.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Saga was waiting for them outside the prison visitor entrance, messy hair backlit by the overhead security lights and her breath making pale clouds in the frigid air. Sherlock was by her side in two steps, and John hurried to pay the cabbie and join them.

“I take it you and Sanne didn’t find anything?” Sherlock asked.

“Not yet,” Saga said. “According to their records Jens Hansen's remains went through cremation and was sent off for burial as planned. We requested copies of all their documentation, but it won't arrive until tomorrow.”

John sniggered. “So. The crematorium was a dead end, then.”

“No.” Saga looked at him as if he was of less than average intelligence. “We can't write it off until we’ve analyzed their data. Weren't you listening?” 

“Come on,” John protested, glancing at Sherlock to see him press his lips together the way he did when he had to suppress a smile. “It’s funny. Crematorium? Dead end?”

Saga’s brow furrowed slightly, and she abruptly turned around and went inside. Sherlock shot John a raised eyebrow and followed her. 

They were waved through the security check without so much as a hello, and nobody tried to take Saga's fingerprints this time. They even got to keep their mobile phones, Lillian had cleared them enough for that.

A guard led them to the small, cramped visitation room. The walls were dark, the ceiling low, and the lighting bad. A few tables with chairs stood in the middle of the room. There were extra chairs against the far wall, one of them was a worn highchair. Looking at it made John think of Mary and the baby. Mary was in prison, and after what she’d done she would never get out of there. Was this their future, his and their child’s? Visiting Mary in a dingy dark room every Saturday? It was a disheartening thought. Mary said that things would work out for the better, but so far John couldn't see how it would.

He was torn from his worries by the sound of men walking in a corridor and the rattling and clanking of chains. A door on the other side of the room opened and a prisoner was led in by two guards. He was a compact, grizzly man with stubble and a receding hairline. What little hair he still had was somehow both trimmed short and shaggy at the same time. He wasn’t particularly tall, but imposing nonetheless, the strength of his broad shoulders was emphasized by the smooth grey fabric of his maximum security prison uniform.

He wore a big grin, looking genuinely happy to see Saga. While the guards were busy unlocking the chains from his cuffed ankles and wrists, he greeted her with a short phrase in Danish. Saga looked happy too, in her fashion. Her eyes lit up and her mouth almost widened into a smile.

As soon as he was free of the chains he walked right up to her. If his hands hadn’t been cuffed together in front of his body, John was sure that he would have enveloped her in a great bear hug. As it was, he just stood in front of her for a moment, smiling. Then, as if they reacted to some unheard signal, they both nodded at the same time and that was that.

Saga stepped back and motioned for him to take a seat at one of the tables. He obeyed, rattling his cuffed hands at the guard and giving him a look that clearly meant “Really? Not taking these off?”

Saga put her smartphone on the table and opened a recording app. “You know why we are here?”

Martin nodded, letting go of the staring match with the guard. “Lillian called me. A big case she said.” 

Saga nodded and pressed rec on her screen. Martin looked pointedly to Sherlock and John. “These are the experts from England?”

“Yes.This is Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and this is John Watson.” She made room so they could shake hands as best they could, restrained as he was. “This is Martin Rohde.”

“Nice to meet you,” John said, since it apparently was his job to maintain the image of British politeness.  

“Nice to meet you too. My English might be a bit rusty, but I’ll try my best to answer your questions.” 

Martin said as Saga sat down across from him at the table. “Tell me about the case. I hear Jens is part of it.”

“Literally,” Sherlock said, pulling up a chair next to Saga. Martin eyed the small sliver of space that remained between Saga's elbow and Sherlock's forearm, his eyebrows slightly raised.

Saga took out a few pictures of the crime scene and spread them out on the table for Martin to see. “This is Jens’s skull. The vertebrae and a few other parts are his as well.”

Martin’s eyes widened but he didn’t flinch. “This is grim.” He picked one of the pictures up and looked at it more closely, reading the message in the background. He shook his head and looked up at Sherlock. “Somebody wants to frighten you.”

Sherlock snorted. “Please. If they think this frightens me, they haven't done their research. If they know the least bit about me, they know this is what I live for.”

John fetched his own chair and sat down as close to Sherlock as he could at the crowded table.

Saga looked sharply at Martin. “Do you have any idea why his body was chosen for this?”

“No,” Martin said. “But it must be important. Not an easy job to steal a corpse.”

“We think that the main reason for this is to get Sherlock’s attention.” John said. “But of course, that doesn’t mean there couldn't be other motives as well, such as desecrating Jens’s remains.”

“Are you seriously asking me who could have a reason to desecrate Jens’s body?” Martin laughed bitterly. “Every loved one of every last one of his victims. Hell, I have reason. But,” he gestured to the room around them, “I have a great alibi.”

“What about the other body parts?” John asked. “Do you have any ideas who that could be?”

“No.”

“This is getting us nowhere.” Sherlock said, leaning in. “How did you meet Jens? Start at the beginning.”

Martin looked between Sherlock’s and Saga’s matching expressions of intense interest and shrugged. “We met through work, he was one of my senior colleagues when I started at the force, back in the eighties. We worked together for many years.”

“You were colleagues.” Sherlock’s eyes boring into Martin. If Martin was troubled by it, he didn’t let on. Sherlock continued, “Tell me about his skill set.”

“He was a good policeman. Very good. The best I’ve ever known until I met Saga here. Very structured, very analytical, and always very dedicated to find the perpetrator. Always two steps ahead.” His eyes got a faraway look. “If it wasn’t for him, I might not have gone for detective, might have settled for a desk job. But he encouraged me, and we had some great cases together.”

Saga leaned in close, eyes narrowed. “When we investigated Jens, you said he was a task force officer. Not a detective.”

Martin nodded. “That’s right. When we worked together he was a detective, but he had ambitions. He even went to America, training with the FBI. After that he got promoted to the task force.”

“FBI?” Sherlock asked, eyebrow arched. “What type of training?”

“Right.“ John fished out his phone and pulled up pictures he’d taken of some of the few documents on Jens that had been written in English. He’d taken notice of them since they had sounded rather cool in a James Bond kind of way. “There were some certificates attached to his résumé, I think it was. Here we go. Courses in Quantico 1993. ‘ _Tracking organized crime_.’ ‘ _Gang identification and infiltration_.’ ‘ _Undercover operations - protocol, theory and practical applications_.’ ‘ _International police and intelligence collaborations_.’ The last one was CIA, actually.”

Martin nodded. “Yeah, he was ambitious. He told me his goal was to work for the Danish Security and Intelligence Service some day. He would have gone far.”

“So, he was a very good police man, you admired him, you became friends.” Sherlock was counting on his fingers. ”Tell us about your friendship. ”

Martin leaned back and looked like he wanted to scratch his stubbly chin, but his restrained hands would hinder the motion. “He was a good colleague and we became good friends. He had a dark, odd sense of humor and we laughed a lot together. Sometimes the work wears you down, even if you’re tough.” At this Martin looked directly at Saga as if to say something particular. “You need to have someone close that you can count on.”

“And you could count on Jens?” John asked, doubtfully.

“Yeah. Jens was a rock for me when Susanne threw me out.”

Saga frowned. “August’s mother?”

“No, Julie’s.” Martin explained. “Jens and Mikaela let me stay at their place until I found my feet again. Helped me get a new place to live.”

“How was Jens as a father? As a husband?”Sherlock had gotten a distant look on his face, and John knew he was already laying the puzzle of Jens Hansen.

Martin blinked. “He was well suited for family life. Dedicated. Loving. He was such a good father, better than I was at that point in my life. That was hard to see, the love he had for his boy, while I didn’t know if I was allowed to be in my children’s lives at all. It was one of the reasons I pulled myself together and moved out.”

“One of the reasons?” John pressed.

“While I stayed with them I got to know his wife Mikaela better and we... got close. When I moved out we continued to hang out from time to time.” Martin drew a shaky breath. “She was having a hard time. Eventually she confided in me; Jens could be violent. She was afraid, she felt unsafe with him. I supported her as best I could. She needed me.”

“So, I take it that Jens’s trust in you was not as well placed as yours in him?” Sherlock pursed his lips. “Predictable”.

Martin shook his head in slight protest. “I was careless and lonely. Mikaela and I started seeing each other. I thought I was in love.” He closed his eyes, pressing them together hard. “Then the accident happened. Jens was wrecked with grief. And I was too, but I couldn’t show it.”

“You never told him you slept with his wife,” Sherlock stated.

“It wasn’t exactly a good time, was it?” Martin retorted with a wry, humorless smile. As he continued his face slackened with regret, old and painful. “This time I stayed with him as he tried to put his life back together. But he never got over it. His temper got bad, he started drinking, taking pills. Our friendship soured, and I moved out. His temper affected his work, and after he got complaints he got fired. Eventually we fell out of touch. I heard from colleagues that he lost his home, and was living on the street. By then I had met Mette and had to focus on my own new family.”

As Martin fell silent Saga finished the account. “A couple of years later Jens found out about Mikaela’s affair with Martin. Shortly after that, he staged his suicide and counted on the Danish police to miss the fact that he was still alive.” Martin huffed and rolled his eyes at the last part, mildly offended, but he didn’t say anything.

There was a few moments of silence. John sorted through the impressions so far. What a tragedy. Some bits of Martin's story resonated particularly strongly. Hearing Martin speak of his inadequacies as a father and as a husband stirred up some of John’s lingering fears. Before Mary, John didn’t have the best of track records when it came to fidelity. This time he’d managed to stay true, for nearly two years. To be fair, they hadn’t had time for normalcy or boredom to set in yet, which usually was the time in any relationship when John would feel the pull to stray. But with Mary in prison, he didn’t know how things would work out. They hadn’t talked about it, but having affairs would be even more of a betrayal now. Mary’d be forced to live out her life without being able to see, or hold, or talk to their child every day, the way John would. The least John could do in compensation would be to stay faithful. That, and to be the best father to their child he ever could be. Even if that meant he’d have to stop going on cases with Sherlock.

Parenthood was a paradigm shift. It changed your life forever. John would have to shift focus, he’d be responsible for a child, and it had to come first. Sherlock would come to him with cases, at first, then less frequently and eventually he’d slip away, out of John’s life. And John would drown in toothless baby smiles and story times, in skinned knees and homework, in normalcy.

John shook off his brooding ruminations and made an effort to continue with the case at hand.  "What about Jens’s family? Parents? Sisters, brothers?”

Martin shook his head. “He was an only child, and his parents died before I met him. Mikaela’s family never liked him much and after she and the boy died, they severed all ties. He didn’t have any other relatives that I knew of, except for his biological mother. We found out about her the same day we caught him. Is she still alive?”

“Yes,” Saga confirmed. “At least she was when we checked her earlier today.”

Sherlock switched gears. “Do you know anything about his finances?”

Martin scrunched up his forehead. “I think his parents left him some money, but not much. By the time he was evicted he was broke. He lived on the street for a while. In the end, he had nothing except for the mobile home where he faked his suicide.”

“We were aware that his crimes must have cost a lot of money.” Saga said. “By the end of our investigation we had started to map his financial state, but aside from a property in Hellerup, nothing of any magnitude came up. We checked for transactions and tried to match unsolved burglaries and robberies to see if he financed his operations that way. We found no such connections. We managed to uncover the financial link between Jens and his new alias Sebastian, but at that time there were no great sums of money on any of his accounts.”

“Of course,” Sherlock mused. “He’d calculated his budget with great care, and it would have been nearly all used up by the end. No need for money when you’re dead.”

“We never did find out how he payed for it all,” Martin said. “We stopped looking when we caught him, we had more than enough for a conviction anyway.”

“You’d better start looking again,” John said. “Where the money came from might be important.”

Saga was already tapping on her phone. “I’m letting Hans know,” she said. “Martin, you really have no idea of where he could have gotten the money from?”

“No, but I’ve thought about how it started, Jens’s big plan for vengeance. I thought about it a lot. On the train on the way out on the bridge, I asked him why he killed all those people. He was bitter. He said he lost his son, his job, his friends, everything. He told me he’d thought about ending it all, even went so far as to put the rifle in his mouth. But none of it had been his fault. So instead, he decided to punish the ones who were responsible.” Martin pressed his lips together bitterly. “The more I think about it, the more it sounds to me that someone helped him come to that conclusion. You don’t flip your perspective just like that, not on your own."

Even though his eyes were still closed, Sherlock somehow managed to frown. “Are you saying you think he had a partner?”

“No.” Saga shook her head firmly. “A partner is a risk. He would not let anyone else work such an important project. He carried out all the preparations and all the crimes by himself. And we didn’t find any connections to any associates when we went through the evidence for his indictment.”

Martin shrugged. “Okay, not a partner. Someone who gave him ideas, or support. A friend? A muse? A self help guide? I don’t know.”

John went through the information they had so far. “So, Jens found out you had betrayed him, the final straw in a long series of betrayals and losses. He thinks about suicide but reconsiders, possibly with outside influence. He decides to plot revenge on everyone who wronged him. He gets ahold of money from somewhere. He selects the people he wanted to die; the judge, the homeless bully, the landlord, the psychologist, the union rep, the journalist.” John pointed at Martin. “The friend who betrayed him. He is patient and methodical.” He paused. “One thing I don’t get - why disguise his revenge as social issues activism?”

“That’s obvious.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “And dull. It has nothing to do with our case.”

John felt the familiar flare of irritation at Sherlock’s blatant dismissal of John’s intellectual capacities. “How can you be so sure? It’s not obvious to me.”

Saga spoke up. “We don’t know if it is relevant to our current investigation, but it is unlikely. The main reason to use the five truths about social issues was to make his story irresistibly appealing for the media, and to make it difficult for criminal detectives to find his real motive, which was to set Martin up so that he would kill Jens so that everyone would see. Then the balance of revenge would be regained. To mirror his own misfortunes, Martin would lose his son, his job, his friends, the respect of his peers and his freedom, perhaps even his wife.”

“See,” Sherlock gloated, turning to John. “Nothing to do with our case.”

John wasn’t quite convinced Sherlock was right, but switched to another line of thought instead. “In order for his plan to work, Jens had to be sure that Martin would be involved in the investigation.”

“Well,” Martin said, “I don’t see how he could count on that.”

Saga, turned to him surprised. “He had hacked your servers, he might have had access to your rosters. Even if he didn’t, you were one of the best detectives in Copenhagen. There was a very high probability that you would get to work on such a high profile case,” Saga said. “He carefully designed the crimes to make sure to get Swedish police involved to insure that you would be thoroughly investigated after his plan was concluded. So that you would be convicted without the protection of your Danish colleagues.”

Martin sagged a little, old pain in his voice. “Then he succeeded in the end, didn’t he? Everything went according to his plans, just a year later.”

“Okay,” Sherlock said, clapping his hands. “Let’s skip forward to your therapy sessions with Jens.”

Martin blinked. “Lillian had arranged for me to meet with a therapist once a week, after,” he searched for words, “after what happened on the bridge.” He took a breath and tried again with slow deliberation. “After August died.” He exhaled. “It didn’t work. All that useless talk, it didn’t help one bit. I felt so much anger and helplessness. And I couldn’t stand everybody’s miserable pity. Then Saga came to me with a case, and when I saw her again it was as if everything just changed. One day of working with her helped me more than a whole year of therapy."

John felt a hot wave of recognition. The desolate feeling after he got home from the war. The first few crappy therapy sessions. Being useless. Missing the war. The relief of meeting Sherlock, who didn’t pity his injured leg, who gave him purpose, who made him laugh again. A thought struck him -  _ Meeting Sherlock saved my life _ . It shocked him so much that he inhaled sharply through his nose. He snuck a peek at Sherlock to see if his reaction had gone undetected, but no such luck. Sherlock looked at him, wide eyed and puzzled.  

Martin continued shakily, and Sherlock turned his attention back to him. “I hated therapy, but it was required for work. And I knew I needed treatment. Jens was like a demon, he was haunting me. I would see him, with his smug fucking smile, next to me on the bus, in a crowd, outside my window. It drove me crazy,” he confessed. "As soon as I started working with Saga again, I told my therapist I wanted to change my sessions. I wanted to see Jens in prison, to know that we put him there. That he got his punishment.”

“Did it work, knowing Jens was punished?” Sherlock asked.

Martin clenched his teeth, biting down on his anger at the memory. “Not at first. He kept being smug and unaffected, like he didn’t care about all the people he killed. He was so different from the person I used to know. It pissed me off. He had to be in there somewhere, hidden behind that wall of indifference.”

“And then?” John prompted.

Martin shifted on the chair, leaned forward. “I found a way to reach him. I wanted him to understand what he had done. I wanted to make him feel compassion again. I appealed to his humanity, the side of him who once wanted to help people. It worked. It was easier that I thought.” Martin took a pause, exhaling and looking uncomfortable, as if he’d said too much.

“But it wasn’t enough. You decided to kill him,” Sherlock stated.

“It wasn’t like that,” Martin protested, eyes defiantly locked to Sherlock’s, then shifting his gaze to Saga. “Saga, it wasn’t!” Saga looked a bit ill at ease. John got the distinct feeling that until now, she and Martin had purposefully avoided the topic of Jens’s murder.

“Oh, but it was.” Sherlock rose from his chair, leaning across the table to loom over Martin and spoke with succinct pronunciation. “Let me spell it out for you.  _ Pre-medi-tation _ .”

He got up and started to pace back and forth next to their table, counting on his fingers like the grandstanding show-off that he was. “Your motive is boring, boring revenge, but your modus operandi was quite impressive. You would have pulled it off, if not for Saga. You convinced your boss and your therapist that you needed to meet Jens as part of your treatment. That gave you opportunity.”

Sherlock continued, gaining speed. “You had to have a series of sessions with Jens - thereby cultivating your relationship with the guards to gain their trust. That gave you the perks of being allowed to come visit at all hours, and even to bring food and personal items, against prison security protocol.” He stopped and made a sharp turn to stare at Martin again, his coat flaring dramatically. ”That gave you means.”

Sherlock stalked towards Martin, pointing at him to emphasize his points. “You gave Jens part of an  _ ongoing police investigation _ , knowing that your boss would find out and reprimand you for it. Then you could tell her your plan to awaken Jens’s dormant compassion, and plant the idea of Jens possibly committing suicide out of guilt. That would cast off suspicions from you.”

Martin sat still, hands on the table and head turned to meet Sherlock’s stare, jaw clenched, breathing fiercely through his nose. Saga looked back and forth between them, all tense, like a spring coiled tight. John felt much the same, his internal monologue reduced to a string of  _ oh shit, oh shit, oh shit _ . Martin looked like a man who could inflict serious damage even with his hands cuffed. Remembering his army training, John looked down at Martins feet. Sure enough, they were steadily planted as wide apart as the ankle cuffs would allow. Martin was ready to launch himself at Sherlock any second. Probably going for a head butt, John figured. If he wasn't careful, Sherlock would end up with a cracked brow and a concussion, and it would serve him right.

Sherlock didn’t seem to pick up on the barely contained violence vibrating in the room. He got up close to Martin, crowding him at the table. “When all these preparations were in place, you stole palytoxin from the police evidence locker. You used that to poison a takeaway coffee, which you gave to Jens to drink while you still was there. You stayed to watch him drink, to personally watch him fall dead to the floor. You were satisfied. Tell me,” he leaned in even closer and spoke softly in Martin’s ear, “did you force him to drink it?”

Martin stood up violently, the chair toppling with a loud clatter. “No! No! You're wrong! I don’t want to talk about it. Guards!”

Saga’s eyes flashed with restrained anger. “Martin,” she said sternly, and then she said something in Swedish, gesturing to the guards to back off. Martin responded with loud exclamations and protests in Danish.

John had shot up and took Sherlock by the arm, dragging him away to the other end of the room and sat him down on a chair. “Not good, Sherlock! Not good,” he hissed, nearly livid, crowding Sherlock, hands locked tight around his shoulders, just this side of actually shaking him. “What was that for? Huh?”

To his dismay, Sherlock was grinning, ear to ear. “Saga and I agreed I would act as ‘bad cop’ so Martin would feel more inclined to confide in her,” he said in a low voice. ”How did I do?”

“What? When?” John whispered back, ignoring Sherlock’s fishing for praise.

Sherlock easily pried off his now slack grip and leaned to the side, trying to peer over John's shoulder. “Texted her in the taxi. Studies show that memory is strongly connected to a person’s mother tongue. High emotions are also helpful when regaining memory data.”

Speechless, John looked back at the table. Martin had calmed down enough to sit down again on the chair that Saga had retrieved, head down and shoulders heaving. Well. That explained how Sherlock knew all those details of Martin visiting Jens in prison. He hadn’t read any of the reports as far as John knew. Saga must have filled him in. “You can understand them?” he whispered, sitting down on the chair next to Sherlock’s. They were as far away from Saga and Martin as possible in the small room, in a dimly lit area over by the opposite wall.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It’s basically a variation of German. Well, it’s not, but close enough. And I have been in Denmark before, didn’t you pay attention to what Mycroft said? Now, shush!”

Sherlock focused on the pair at the table. Saga sat back down across from Martin. She reached out and placed a hand on his forearm, patting it awkwardly. Martin seemed to appreciate it greatly. He latched onto her, taking her hand in both of his and let out a couple of loud painful sobs, shoulders shaking, before falling quiet. Saga looked uncomfortable and withdrew her hand, but Martin didn’t seem to mind. Saga looked at him intently and spoke to him, urging him to talk. Martin nodded and started talking.

John glanced at Sherlock. “Can you translate?”

In response, Sherlock leaned closer and whispered.“ _ …when I was certain that he would feel remorse again, I showed him my favorite photo of August as a boy. I made him look at it, a long, good look. I made him understand what he had done. I made him feel all the shame, all the guilt. I made sure. I broke him. _ ”

Saga said something that Sherlock didn’t bother translating. He continued with Martin’s story, his warm breath tickling John’s ear with every word. “ _ I enjoyed seeing him like that. It felt like justice, finally. I won. _ ”

John sat still, letting Sherlock’s rich, dark-timbre voice send sweet shivers rolling down his spine. He knew that it was wrong to take delight in listening to the horrible tale of how this man became a murderer, but he couldn’t help it. He was transfixed by Sherlock’s proximity, the warmth of his breath on John’s neck, the lull of his voice.

Over at the table, Martin shook his head, looking away, snivelling. Saga handed him a pack of tissues. Martin blew his nose before continuing, choked and upset. “ _ He’s right, the Englishman, _ ” Sherlock translated. “ _ I did think about killing Jens, every day. Long before Mette left me. But when I had broken him, I thought I could avoid it. I was wrong. In the end it was the only thing I could do _ .”

“ _ But Mette did leave me _ , that’s his ex wife, I take it,” Sherlock explained, already sounding bored. He switched from a strict translation of Martin’s first person perspective to a cursory summary of the interview. “She couldn’t love him anymore. Blah, blah, blah. Jens returned into his mind, blah, blah, blah.”

Martin started crying again, but this time it was more in resignation than anything else. After a long uncomfortable moment Martin took a long shaky breath and raised his head and said something that Sherlock didn’t bother translating. From the quiet amazement in his voice, John assumed he was  expressing his relief of finally coming clean to his friend.

Saga and Martin talked quietly for a while, the exchange apparently not worthy of translation. John could hear his heartbeat in his ears, the warmth of Sherlock’s lips still just a breath away. Eventually Saga spoke up, and Sherlock translated the question. “She’s asking if Martin noticed anything when he visited Jens in prison, any signs he had contact with anyone on the outside. What about Jens’s cell, what kind of things did he have?”

Martin shrugged. Sherlock translated. “ _ He had a normal cell. Small, bare. A bed, a desk, not much more _ .”

Saga asked again, with more urgency. Martin closed his eyes in concentration. “ _ A radio, a few books, a notice board, a couple of notebooks, _ ” Sherlock recounted.

John frowned. “All those things are accounted for in the evidence inventory, except for the notebooks.”

Sherlock continued to relay the interview. “She asks about the notice board. Were there any letters, postcards? Any communication at all? No, he says. No postcards. But several pages full of typed text, could be letters. A few newspaper clippings. Pictures, looked like they were taken from books. All of it arranged in neatly structured order.”

Saga nodded solemnly, eyes glinting. “Like the planning room in the basement.” Martin nodded back, open realization in his eyes.

Sherlock put his hand on John’s shoulder and leaned in closer. “That might mean he was planning something, something new.” He didn't take his hand away as he continued translating Saga's questions. “What made the notebooks so noticeable?  _ Jens was writing in them when I visited one day. He seemed uneasy. I got the feeling that he didn’t want me to look at them, but he didn’t put them away, as if he didn’t want to show me they were important. _ He asked to keep them, after Jens died. That’s why they aren't listed as evidence. They are in a storage unit, ex wife has the keys."

John snorted in disbelief. “Why would the police let him have the notebooks? They were evidence, they didn’t even process them?”

“My guess is Martin confessed right away. No need to process some old notebooks.” Sherlock smirked. “Saga’s upset about it, too. Look at her fume.” His attention back at Saga, Sherlock translated again as she continued the interview. “ _ Anything else that Jens did or said that you found odd, that might be connected to our new crime? _ "

Martin thought for a bit. “It might be nothing, but... He asked about you, Saga.”

“I know.” Saga stated. “I read your psych journal.”

Martin nodded, as if didn’t expect anything else. “It wasn’t the first time. He asked about you earlier too. On the train, before you shot me. I told him to shut up about you. I was so angry.”

Saga looked slightly confused. “Why would he ask about me?”

“I think he wanted to piss me off. It worked. He said you were intelligent. Interesting. It reminded me of August, the way he used to ask about you. Maybe Jens was as fascinated by you as you were by him?”

“Maybe.” Saga frowned and changed the subject. "Have you had any therapy since you murdered him?”

Martin looked a little sheepish. “No. Not really. There’s group therapy on Thursdays, but I don’t talk much…”

Sherlock sighed, a sure sign that his patience had run out. “Now they are just talking about continuing therapy and his dead kid’s birthday.” His tone of voice made it clear that he found it dreary, bordering on mind numbing. Suddenly he cleared his throat, a loud, sharp sound that made Saga and Martin jump. John jumped too, if he was honest. He should have seen that one coming.

Martin and Saga looked over at them, almost surprised they weren’t alone in the room. Martin’s expression changed a little when he saw them, and John felt rather caught out, acutely aware of Sherlock’s proximity and the large, warm hand still on his shoulder. He wanted to pull away, to shake Sherlock’s hand off. But he didn’t. Who cared what some Danish prisoner thought about him and Sherlock?

Sherlock didn't seem bothered by the scrutiny, or John’s internal crisis, if he even noticed it. He got up and went over to the table. “Well. If you are all done with your personal issues, I have one last question.”  

Martin looked up at him wearily. “Yeah?”

“As far as you can tell, did Jens have any friends after he was admitted to prison?”

Martin shook his head. “As far as I could tell, no. He seemed lonely.”

“So, no connections at all?”Sherlock pressed.

“Can’t think of any.” Martin smiled wryly. ”Trust me, it is very lonely for an ex police in prison. Ask the warden to check his visitors and telephone logs. See if you find anything.”

John decided this was his best opportunity to get Sherlock out of there before he messed things up again. “Sherlock, let’s give them a moment. Let’s go get those records.”

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

After they finally got to leave the warden’s office with a rather meager wad of log printouts they found Saga waiting for them outside. She stood motionless by her car, her back to the frosty concrete walls that separated the prison yard from the free world, looking out into the black winter sky. John thought she looked tired and lonely. She played distractedly with a small, round box. She opened the lid and took out a small item. John thought it looked a bit like a teabag, but much smaller. The tiny teabag went in her mouth, between her upper lip and her gums. What the hell was that?

The frosty asphalt glittered in the evening darkness, and their footfalls crunched on the frozen ground. Saga looked up at them when she heard them approach.

“You got the logs?”

John showed her the printouts in response. Saga pulled out her phone and started to text someone. Sherlock bent down to read it, but Saga didn’t care about the invasion of privacy. “I’m reporting to Lillian,” she said.

"Sherlock, give her some space, would you?" John admonished. Sherlock gave John an odd look, but stepped away. Saga ignored them both, still texting.

Sherlock's blatant disregard for the rules of normal human interaction reminded John that it might be a good idea to smooth things over. "Sorry about Sherlock, going so hard on your friend earlier. Sometimes he doesn't really consider the strain his methods of gaining information can have on other people."

Saga looked at him, surprised. Clearly she had not expected an apology. "The method was effective, Martin told us more about Jens than he'd ever done before. And Martin told me he was fine, so I'm fine too."

Okay. That was odd. People usually got upset when Sherlock did something like this, some holding grudges for years. But, hey, as long as they were off the hook and wouldn't hinder the case, John wouldn't complain. “What now?” he asked. “Back to work?”

Saga glanced at them sideways, considering. “The rest of the team have gone home by now. What are you doing now?”

John shrugged. “We’ll get back to the flat and continue going through all the files, see if we find anything. We need some food as well,” and, sensing Sherlock rolling his eyes, he added: “Yes Sherlock, we do!”

Sherlock huffed, affronted, but didn’t protest. Score for the John Watson nutritional war of attrition.  

“I’ll come with you.” Saga decided. “I’m hungry and I’m good at sorting through files.”


End file.
